Ep. 329 | Why The Angst?

It's a fun word to say, it's a fun word to spell, Definitionally, angst is a feeling of anxiety, of apprehension, of insecurity.

And there appear to be several reasons why this feeling is creeping into the psyche of young adults.

And they include the usual suspects, the economy, career prospects, student loan debt, the job market, AI, cost of housing, the dating scene, political discourse, social media, Institutional distrust.

And as if this wasn't enough, the new role of technology in all of these things.

And that's what I want to focus on today, technology and the democratization of information and access to information.

Because it used to be the case that there were barriers to information, and those barriers advantaged a large cohort of people who had access to that information, typically by way of college degrees.

and that people who had access to that information were the ones hired into well-paying, reliable, and conventional jobs.

And the system purred along like this for decades.

If you got into a quote-unquote good college, you would gain access to the information, and that would translate into a job and eventually a career.

That was just the way the world worked, for good or for bad.

Well, what happens when seemingly overnight, everyone has access to the same information and it doesn't take a college degree to become a subject matter expert in history or engineering or biology.

Everyone in the world has access to lectures on all of these subjects from MIT, from Yale, from Harvard professors for free.

without having to apply, without having to be accepted, without having to even be on campus.

You can do it from your bedroom.

Simply check out YouTube, log into Udemy, Khan Academy, podcasts, and the world of information is at your fingertips.

Sounds perfect, does it not? Isn't this what we've been waiting for? For every human to have unrestricted access to the same content that was once only available to the chosen few who gained admission to the prestigious colleges? I'm not so sure.

What are the consequences of this democratization of information and access? Let's start with the cohort of students who used to have this gig locked up.

It's a fun word to say, it's a fun word to spell, Definitionally, angst is a feeling of anxiety, of apprehension, of insecurity.

And there appear to be several reasons why this feeling is creeping into the psyche of young adults.

And they include the usual suspects, the economy, career prospects, student loan debt, the job market, AI, cost of housing, the dating scene, political discourse, social media, Institutional distrust.

And as if this wasn't enough, the new role of technology in all of these things.

And that's what I want to focus on today, technology and the democratization of information and access to information.

Because it used to be the case that there were barriers to information, and those barriers advantaged a large cohort of people who had access to that information, typically by way of college degrees.

and that people who had access to that information were the ones hired into well-paying, reliable, and conventional jobs.

And the system purred along like this for decades.

If you got into a quote-unquote good college, you would gain access to the information, and that would translate into a job and eventually a career.

That was just the way the world worked, for good or for bad.

Well, what happens when seemingly overnight, everyone has access to the same information and it doesn't take a college degree to become a subject matter expert in history or engineering or biology.

Everyone in the world has access to lectures on all of these subjects from MIT, from Yale, from Harvard professors for free.

without having to apply, without having to be accepted, without having to even be on campus.

You can do it from your bedroom.

Simply check out YouTube, log into Udemy, Khan Academy, podcasts, and the world of information is at your fingertips.

Sounds perfect, does it not? Isn't this what we've been waiting for? For every human to have unrestricted access to the same content that was once only available to the chosen few who gained admission to the prestigious colleges? I'm not so sure.

What are the consequences of this democratization of information and access? Let's start with the cohort of students who used to have this gig locked up.